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‘I’m proud of them going out into the world’: Young naturalists on their quest to save harvest mice

‘I’m proud of them going out into the world’: Young naturalists on their quest to save harvest mice

Spurred into action by the species’ threatened future, two best friends embarked on a project to release 250 of the animals in Devon Doing somersaults in the corner of a field in Devon this week were the fluffy results of an audacious wildlife project by two 13-year-old girls. Best friends Eva Wishart and Emily Smith had become devoted to harvest mice, and were upset, a couple of years ago, to find out the species is threatened in England due to farming practices and habitat loss. Continue reading...

As Putin’s bombs fall on Ukraine, the Royal Opera House had a call to make about Anna Netrebko. It made the wrong one | Martin Kettle

As Putin’s bombs fall on Ukraine, the Royal Opera House had a call to make about Anna Netrebko. It made the wrong one | Martin Kettle

The Russian soprano says she has condemned the war and has no affinity with this Kremlin. But hosting her still seems unwise Puccini’s Tosca is high on the list of operas I don’t much care if I never see again. So the fact that the Russian soprano Anna Netrebko, unquestionably one of our era’s exceptional opera singers, is due to sing Tosca in a new production at Covent Garden next month does not present me with a dilemma. I won’t be there anyway. It might be more difficult, I admit, if Netrebko was singing Verdi, where she is so outstanding. But this column is not about my taste in opera. It is about something of wider moral importance. Netrebko’s London performances pose complex questions but require straightforward answers. First, is it right for a prestigious British institution, the Royal Opera House, to be hiring Netrebko while the Ukraine war continues? The answer could in theory be yes, were she to repeat her opposition to the war, but on the current evidence it is no. Continue reading...

Rachel Roddy’s recipe for fig, ricotta and orange tart | A kitchen in Rome

Rachel Roddy’s recipe for fig, ricotta and orange tart | A kitchen in Rome

Fresh figs, so beloved of the ancient Egyptians and Romans alike, are the stars of this ambrosial summer bake that works almost as beautifully with fig jam Yesterday, we left a garden with a fig tree as tall as a house to catch a train to Rome Termini station, where tiny, thrill-seeking figs grow on the tracks. The fearless fig tree is a descendant of the prehistoric wild caprifig, which spread from Caria (hence the species name carica ) in ancient Anatolia, across the Mediterranean. Cultivation is thought to have started in Egypt and the Levant, probably between 4000 and 2700BC; particular evidence of this is the common fig ( Ficus carica ) on the stone walls within ancient Egyptian tombs called mastaba , painted so their occupants could enjoy the fruit in the afterlife. Dozens of examples are described in a research paper by the professor of Egyptology Noha Hany Gerges Salama, including paintings within a fifth-dynasty mastaba of Iymery, in Giza. One painting in particular depicts two fig trees, both of which have a boy standing in their branches and picking fruit, while men under the trees collect fallen figs in baskets. Another exquisite painting shows two men seated opposite each other, one of whom is holding a plate holding three enormous figs. Salama notes what a common food source fresh and dried figs were in ancient Egypt, and used often to enhance flavour and sweeten, but also how figs, their leaves and the sap from the branches provided a natural rennet for cheese-making and yeast for wine-making. Continue reading...